Ambiguous storytelling in three texts: unsettling the perception of reality
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Defne Karaosmanoğlu
Defne Karaosmanoğlu holds a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University and she has been teaching in the Faculty of Communication at Bahçeşehir University. Her research interests include intercultural communication, cultural studies of food, interdisciplinary approaches and methodological questions in social sciences and humanities.
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Eleni Varmazi
Eleni Varmazi has a PhD from the Department of Communications of Athens University. She worked as Adjunct Professor at the Film Department of Fine Arts in the University of Thessaloniki. Currently she is Assistant Professor at the Cinema and Television Department of Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul. Her research interests include cinema aesthetics, history of cinema and documentary films.
Tolga Hepdinçler got his PhD degree with the thesis named “Photography and orientalism: Photographic representation of Ottoman in 19th century” in 2006 from Ankara University. He worked and studied in Ankara University between 1998 and 2008 as a research assistant. He has been working as Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography and Video at Bahçeşehir University since August 2009. His research interests include contemporary photography, art history and European film studies.
Abstract
Some texts offer to the reader/viewer ambiguity and in-betweenness and they effectively contradict reality within the world of the story and within the world of the reader/viewer. In this paper we look at three distinct fictitious texts as our case studies (Blow-Up [fiction film], Austerlitz [novel] and Mindgame [theatrical play]), which confuse the reader/viewer with their particular ways of contradicting reality. In other words, we elaborate texts in relation to their capacity to raise critical thinking through the working notions of ambiguity, in-betweenness and unreliability. We argue that our case studies not only surprise and disturb the reader/viewer with plot twists, reverse chronology, unreliable narrators, ambiguous perceptions of the protagonists and so on, but they also bring a critical eye to the dominant concepts and the working institutions of the society; and also to the dominant ways of perceiving reality. In other words, these texts through the use of all the above-mentioned literary devices in their storytelling enable the reader/viewer to think critically.
About the authors
Defne Karaosmanoğlu holds a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University and she has been teaching in the Faculty of Communication at Bahçeşehir University. Her research interests include intercultural communication, cultural studies of food, interdisciplinary approaches and methodological questions in social sciences and humanities.
Eleni Varmazi has a PhD from the Department of Communications of Athens University. She worked as Adjunct Professor at the Film Department of Fine Arts in the University of Thessaloniki. Currently she is Assistant Professor at the Cinema and Television Department of Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul. Her research interests include cinema aesthetics, history of cinema and documentary films.
Tolga Hepdinçler got his PhD degree with the thesis named “Photography and orientalism: Photographic representation of Ottoman in 19th century” in 2006 from Ankara University. He worked and studied in Ankara University between 1998 and 2008 as a research assistant. He has been working as Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography and Video at Bahçeşehir University since August 2009. His research interests include contemporary photography, art history and European film studies.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Ambiguous storytelling in three texts: unsettling the perception of reality
- A cross-cultural gender analysis of the pragmatic functions of conceptual metaphor in Spanish and English newspapers
- When the “other” runs in front of the bull: a membership categorization analysis of a television news story
- Social identity and procedural consequentiality in welfare interviews
- Creepy-ass cracker in post-racial America: Don West’s examination of Rachel Jeantel in the George Zimmerman murder trial
- Extended concurrent speech and guānxì management in Mandarin
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Ambiguous storytelling in three texts: unsettling the perception of reality
- A cross-cultural gender analysis of the pragmatic functions of conceptual metaphor in Spanish and English newspapers
- When the “other” runs in front of the bull: a membership categorization analysis of a television news story
- Social identity and procedural consequentiality in welfare interviews
- Creepy-ass cracker in post-racial America: Don West’s examination of Rachel Jeantel in the George Zimmerman murder trial
- Extended concurrent speech and guānxì management in Mandarin
